RACE is always a thorny issue and this week Channel 4 tackles it head on with a new season of programmes under the banner Race: Science’s Last Taboo.

It kicks off on Monday with a programme on Race And Intelligence. In 2007, Nobel Prize-winning US scientist James Watson caused a storm of controversy when he quoted research which suggested black people were less intelligent than other races.

Are IQ tests biased? Is race a scientific category at all? Rageh Omaar (pictured) sets out to discover more, meeting scientists who believe that races can be differentiated as well as those who vehemently oppose this view.

On Tuesday Channel 4 screens Beach, Nip, Tuck: The White Beauty Myth.

Michael Jackson’s radical facial transformation was shrouded in secrecy and became a contentious subject for discussion. Many saw him as a sell-out, betraying his ethnic heritage. For others he is a source of inspiration, paving the way for people to use surgery and science to change their race.

This documentary follows six people who want to go to extreme lengths to westernise their bodies and faces.

Coincidentally, there’s a very similar film shown at almost the same time on BBC1 on Tuesday.

Make Me White sees Watchdog presenter Anita Rani examining the skin-lightening business, now thought to be worth millions of pounds.

On Thursday on Channel 4, former schoolteacher Jane Elliott asks How Racist Are You? Most of us would like to answer that question with ‘not at all’, but Jane would beg to differ.

She recreates the shocking exercise she used 40 years ago to teach her nine-year-old pupils about prejudice, when she split the class in two according to eye colour.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy finds out if the exercise still has something to teach us.